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Test of RCS2 standard successful

The new DVB-RCS2 standard was put to the test in Oslo, Norway on 8 June, under the watchful eyes of ESA and the Norwegian Space Center. STM Norway AS, a division of STM Group, Inc., provided the first demonstration of RCS2.

“We are pleased to see next generation of DVB-RCS standard enhanced features tested by STM on their new DVB-RCS HW platform paying them back the effort made in several research and development fronts. It is also a reward for the DVB standardisation group including ESA and all different organisations and industry participants to witness the new standard becoming reality,” said Olivier Smeyers, ESA Telecommunications Engineer and technical officer for the ARTES 3-4 project New Generation DVB-RCS Hardware.

“The ever increasing demand for higher data throughput along with new deployments of spot beam satellite broadband systems makes the new technology indispensable.”

RCS2 provides for higher order modulation and coding along with many other elements contributing to higher throughput and bandwidth efficiency. It has been implemented on STM Norway’s SatLink platform. Total efficiency gains with RCS2 can be as large as 300 percent on Multi Frequency-Time Division Multiple Access
(MF-TDMA) carriers compared to legacy Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT) networks.

STM’s implementation of DVB-RCS2 will yield bandwidth efficiencies up to 2.9 bps/Hz on TDMA carriers and offer excellent return link availability with ACM, critical for new broadband networks. Plus, there are significant gains in the average throughput per VSAT with SatLink’s higher symbol rate support and much higher capacity carrier groups with fast dynamic bandwidth sharing via frequency hopping.

The new DVB-RCS2 standard was published by the DVB organisation in March of this year based on collaborative work by many leading industry participants. Both the specification and implementation are the culmination of three years of advanced development, in which STM Norway was the key technology contributor, leading several research organisations under contract to ESA.

“We are grateful to ESA and the Norwegian Space Center for their support and guidance in reaching this milestone. The DVB-RCS2 standard would not have become a reality without their support and the widespread industry commitment,” said Bjorn Platou, General Manager of STM Norway. “The event demonstrated the key performance enhancements in DVB-RCS2, including the new 16-state Turbo code, higher order modulations of MF-TDMA carriers at 8PSK and 16QAM, Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM) per timeslot, and the new efficient Return Link Encapsulation (RLE).”